Billy Joel, The King of ‘Dad Rock’

Billy Joel is honoured to be a leading figure of the ‘dad rock’ movement.

The 66-year-old Grammy winning-musician hasn’t released an album since his 1993 offering River of Dreams, which went platinum in several countries.

Billy remains popular with younger generations and he has no idea how youth listeners catch wind of his music.

‘I don’t know! I haven’t figured it out. I assume they’re their own generation and they’ve got their own music. There’s a lot of stuff I don’t know about, like electronic dance music,’ he told Entertainment Weekly. ‘Yeah! That’s a whole other thing. But obviously they’ve heard my music somewhere. Whether their parents played it and it’s, like, dad rock, which I love. I love that expression! That’s what I am.’

Billy attended the legendary Woodstock festival in 1969, an event which is considered to be one of the major catalysts for all modern music festivals.

But the rock star didn’t really enjoy his time there.

‘I went to Woodstock. I didn’t play there, but I went up on a motorcycle, which was a good move because the highway was just a parking lot. I wanted to see Hendrix and the Who. But after a day and a half with no real toilet facilities.what am I, a bear? I have to go in the woods? There was a lot of mud and people were smoking a lot of pot and taking a lot of acid,’ Billy recalled, noting he wasn’t engaging in any drug use at the time.

‘I didn’t do anything back then. I drank a beer or something. The first day, I saw Santana. Or was it Joe Cocker? I was dirty and itchy and covered with poison ivy and I thought, ‘Just get me out of here! I’ve got to use a bathroom.’

Hot on the heels of performing his 100th concert at Madison Square Garden on July 18th (during which Bruce Springsteen showed up, and the pair sang duets of "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" and "Born to Run"), Billy Joel returned to perform for his fifth straight year at Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts on August 10, 2018.